Finally! A Decision!

Some of you probably know that I'm working on a Masters in Library and Information Science. It's a field that interests and excites me and I love it!

However, long story short, some issues have come up with the program I'm currently in. I'm not going to go into all the frustrating details, but it's something that's been stressing me out since February. It's been a lot of "wait-and-see-what-happens" and worrying. A month or two ago, I started to seriously look at transferring schools and UW-Milwaukee topped my list. Turns out that the school I'm currently at decided to partner with UWM and make it easy for those interested students to transfer to UWM's online program while still keeping a lot of credits. I went to an informational meeting on Wednesday about the deal the two schools came up with and finally came to a decision-I'm transferring.

I filled out the applications this weekend and just have to drop off one of them at my current school so they can forward all my application information and transcripts to UWM. I'll be giving up the face-to-face interaction and since I have 21 credits and they'll only take up to 18, I'll lose a class, but I think it will be a better fit with me personally and I won't run the risk of not receiving an ALA accredited degree and won't have to wait years until I'm finished.

It's amazing how much better I feel now that a decision has finally been made and I've taken action. Granted, I'm still stressed since I'm not technically accepted as a UWM student and it'll be hard turning in the application at my current school and saying "I don't want to go here anymore", but at least something is being done.

Letterpress!

As frustrated as I am right now with my MLIS program, it has given me some fabulous opportunities and taken me to fantastic places. The latest is The Nomadic Press, a letterpress business that's in St. Paul. It's a one-man outfit in an old storefront just across the river from downtown. The first floor is the printing business and the second is his wife's graphic design office. My professor for the class I'm in right now is friends with the owner, so he arranged for us to get a peek at how presses work.

The Nomadic Press has three presses-one from the 1800's, one from the 1920's and the "newest" one is from the 1950's. The oldest one is a hulking beast that actually seems alive. It can feed its own paper and will "breathe" when it grabs a new piece. We saw the one from the 1920's in action. You have to manually feed in the paper and it's very easy to see how dangerous presses are. Too slow and you can get your fingers snapped off!

We actually got to print something using the one from the 1950's. The owner had a collection of old print blocks that date back to the early 1900s and later and we each got to pick one. I, of course, gravitated towards one of his oldest blocks. It's a little fairy (she didn't scan very well) that's about an inch high. Since it was so old and worn, there was a lot of adjustment that had to be done with the bed of the press, which I got to do (with supervision, of course)!

The entire shop was littered with fonts and frames and ink and gouge carving tools and I couldn't help but think of letterboxing. There is a lot of overlap, from the setting of type so that it prints correctly to the creation of new printing blocks/stamps and selecting the right ink, etc, etc. Maybe this summer I'll ask the owner if he would be open to having a letterbox in his shop...

If you ever have the chance to get a tour of a letterpress business, I would highly recommend it. And if you're in the Twin Cities area (or even outside Minnesota), definitely check out the Nomadic Press if you need invitations, business cards, etc printed. He does fantastic work!

Where Have I Been?

Wow...this hasn't been updated since May!

Where have I been?

Short answer: Around

Slightly longer answer: Let's just say it wasn't a very fun summer.

Nothing particularly bad happened. It was just a difficult summer.

There were a few good things:

Spent the 4th of July in Marquette, MI with my parents, brother and aunt & uncle and their families. The last time I was in Marquette was about 10 years ago. That trip really made me realize that Marquette and my aunt & uncles' house on Lake Superior had a huge impact on me and my childhood memories. I can stand in the middle of their lake house and tell you the view from the windows and where things are in the house.

Finally hit 300 finds! Find 100 was in the Outer Banks, find 200 was on Mercer Island in Washington and find 300 was in Chanhassen, MN. About time I have a milestone in the state I actually live in.

School has started again. I'm taking two classes: Management of Libraries and Information Centers (yuck!) and Preservation and Conservation (yay!). The Preservation and Conservation class is the first of the archiving classes and is absolutely fascinating. That class makes me excited about school again. The Management class is the last of the "required" classes that I have to take, so I can't wait until it's over!

The LTC at the top of the page is "Lotus Blossom". It's one of my stress relieving cards, meaning just use materials that I have on hand when I'm feeling frustrated and just need to do something fun (which happened a few times this summer). It didn't scan very well, but I like it. I used three different patterns of origami paper for the background.

More Schoolin'

The class I'm taking this semester is about user instruction, which means it's really an introduction to teaching theories and methods. And, of course, some actual teaching. I avoid getting in front of a crowd to speak whenever possible and even if you meet me on a one-on-one basis, I'm really quiet. Needless to say, I'm counting down the days until the class is over.

I'm in the process of working on my final project for the class. It's a 45 minute lesson on something involving the library science field I want to go into once I graduate. Since my areas of interest are special libraries and archives (which, coincidentally, has the least amount of user instruction) it's a bit harder to figure out what I want to teach. The other people in my class are all going into school media centers, academic libraries or public libraries (which all involve lots and lots of user instruction), so they've been doing the usual "This is how the catalog works, etc, etc." The only other archives student in my class made up an archive (that specialized in artifacts relating to pirates, yar!) and went over the rules and how to use a finding aide. I'm going to focus on corporate libraries and do a re-interpretation of a presentation that I've sat through at work.

And because of my procrastinating ways, I have two weeks to pull it together. I'm hoping to get a large part of it done this weekend while the weather is certainly un-springlike. As I type this, I'm watching the falling snow being whipped around by the wind. It's April! At least the snow isn't sticking. If the weather was nicer, I'd be seriously tempted to go out and find my first letterbox of the year now that most of the snow has melted. I have a serious itch to go letterboxing, but haven't been able to all winter since we've had a continuous snow cover since December. If I get enough work done this week, maybe I'll escape out to the woods next weekend and find a box or two. If not, then I'll get my fix at the Northern Iowa gathering in May and the Great Lakes gathering at the end of May. I don't know how much 'boxing I'll get to do as the host of the gathering, but that whole week is going to be like one big party for me. There's Memorial Day on Monday, my birthday on that Thursday, and then the gathering on Saturday. Maybe I'll finally break 300 finds for my birthday!

Enough procrastinating for now...

Have You Hugged Your Cataloger Today?

This semester of school has certainly given me a new appreciation for what catalogers do.

The Dewey system and I? Well, we get along fabulously. It's like doing a puzzle. A very elegant, nerdy puzzle. Granted, when you get into dropping digits and zeros it gets a bit confusing. And sometimes when you look at a number, you can't really figure out the thought process that the cataloger took, but I love it. A book on breeding racehorses? 636.12. You say you're interested in civil engineering as a profession? 624.023. Doing a Dewey number really reminds me of letterboxing-looking at clues, trying to decipher them to get to the right place, and the "A-ha!" moment when you find what you're looking for. You can really tailor the number to bring out certain aspects of the work. It's fantastic!

My relationship with the Library of Congress Classification System? I want a divorce. There are 44+ volumes (compared to Dewey's sleek four) and there are no instructions (the brief instructions in Dewey seem downright verbose). Granted, it's the Library of Congress and they do pretty much what they want to do and this system obviously works for them. It was created for use only in the Library of Congress and they don't really share the rules that their catalogers use. So us mere mortal librarians (and poor MLIS students) basically have to figure it out based on what others have figured out.

I've spent the past three hours pouring over various volumes of the LoC Classification System for my final exam and I honestly feel like throwing them out the window. There are directions to look at a certain table, but no clues as to where this table is. The descriptions of the headings are vague at the best of times and the indentations screw with your head. Tables are scattered throughout the volumes, so you have to go digging in several different books to find what you need.

So hug the cataloger at your local library and thank them for making it easy for you to find what you need! 'Cause it sure as heck ain't easy to do.